Literary Paradigms in the Conception of South Asian Muslim Identity:

Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Hasan Askari 1

Mehr Afshan Farooqi

University of Virginia

What could be the reason for otherness

We too are from where you belong
-Mir Taqi Mir 2

This essay is an inquiry into how two influential Urdu writers and intellectuals perceived

the relationship between Islam, Muslim and Urdu. It proposes to re think the meaning and

authenticity of composite culture (ganga - jamni tahzeeb), its implications in the

construction of Indo-Muslim identity, and how this identity would be re configured in the

context of the nation-states of India and Pakistan. The larger issue that it seeks to

highlight is the position of Urdu as a part of the unity called “Indian Literature,” and how

that unity would be sundered with the development of “Pakistani Literature.” Would

Urdu need to move away from its secular roots-tradition to become Pakistani? The

answer to this question is embedded in how one approaches and ultimately defines the

Indo-Muslim cultural consciousness.

My focus will be on the positions taken by two monumental personalities of

twentieth century Urdu literature: poet, philosopher, activist Muhammad Iqbal (1877–

1938), and premier literary-social critic, Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919–1978). Iqbal

and Askari were near contemporaries. Askari, the younger, lesser known of the two, lived

through the experience of Partition and was the first to raise the question: What would be

the culture of Pakistan? By 1938, a precocious Askari was beginning to make his mark in

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Urdu, Iqbal was dead, and the Progressive Writer's Association was an established force

in Urdu.

1.

Iqbal, generally regarded as the intellectual force behind the idea of Pakistan, was

born to working class parents in Sialkot, Punjab in 1877. His ancestors were Kashmiri

Brahmins (Sapru). A gifted student of philosophy, Iqbal had already made a name for

himself as a poet before he left for England in 1905, and onward to Heidelberg and

Munich from where he submitted his dissertation, The Development of Metaphysics in

Persia (November, 1907). 3 His thesis was an investigation of Persian religious thought

beginning from Zarathustra, and connecting with an examination and ideas of Persian

theologians notably Molla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1640), Hadi Sabzwari (d. 1878), and

Abdulkarim Jili (1366–1424). Jili’s concept of al insan-ul kamil (Perfect Man), and on

the Ascension of the soul, influenced Iqbal’s own ideas of man’s spiritual development.

Iqbal's mental universe was shaped by his preoccupation with Islam as a faith, a

way of life, and as a political ideology. Before his sojourn in Europe, he was drawn to

Sufism, and a sort of nationalistic cultural pluralism, that he saw as a position, quite

compatible to his conception of Islam as a universal faith. His poems spoke of religious

tolerance, freedom, and justice, moral values inspired by the Islamic tradition. He wrote

on themes of nature that mirrored his deep knowledge of Hindu philosophy and Vedanta.

Many of his poems, such as his beautiful and moving translation of the Vedic hymn to

the sun - the Gayatri Mantra, the Ode to Himalayas, and the famous Tarana-e hindi

(Indian Song) all point to his allegiance to a composite Indo-Muslim culture. They are

2
also reflective of his patriotic self. But after his return from Europe, he moved on from

both. 4

In Europe, Nationalism was raging everywhere and it forced Iqbal to re-evaluate

his understanding of Islamic universalism as against territorial nationalism. Though he

always remained opposed to nationalism as invented and developed in the West, his

European experience stimulated him to refashion his Universalist vision to a

comparatively restricted and exclusive view of Muslim society. 5 Another outcome of

Iqbal's stay in Europe was his developing hostility towards what he called “Indian

Sufism” or traditional Sufism. As Iqbal later on mentioned in his lectures, he “Despaired

at the state into which Muslim religio-philosophic tradition had fallen out of sheer neglect.

Muslims were left with a ‘worn out’ or ‘practically dead metaphysics’ with its peculiar

thought forms and set phraseology producing a deadening effect on the modern mind.” 6

He began the quest for purity in religion much on the lines of the great eighteenth century

reformist, Shah Waliullah of Delhi (1703–62) and, before him the pre-eminent

Naqshbandi Sufi of the seventeenth century, Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, popularly called the

Mujaddid-e Alf-e Sani (Renewer [of the Faith] in the second Millennium). Shah

Waliullah had thought that the principal cause of the moral and political decline of the

Indian Muslims was their ignorance of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet. Like

Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah, Iqbal also became conscious of the

possibilities of using Islam's spiritual force to restore political power to the Muslims

albeit within the parameters of a purposeful social order. What Iqbal sought was a

rationally driven spirituality that could be the answer to both pantheism and Western

materialist intellectualism.

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 Slowly, his new ideas took shape. In 1911, he recited his passionate, revolutionary

poetic composition Shikwa (Complaint) at the Anjuman-e Himayat-e Islam (Society for

the Support of Islam) which moved the audience to tears. In 1913, he produced Jawab-e

Shikwa (Answer to the Complaint) which he presented to a large gathering at Lahore's

Mochi Darwaza. Both can be called Iqbal's most popular poems and I will get to their

popularity and role in defining his position later in this essay. In 1915, he published

Asrar-e Khudi, (Secrets of the Self), a long poem in Persian written in the style and meter

of Maulana Rumi’s famous Masnavi. The Asrar-e Khudi was intended to be shock

therapy for his followers. In the poem, Iqbal gave a new positive meaning or

interpretation of the philosophical idea of khudi, or the Self. He called it selfhood instead

of selfishness. 7 Iqbal wanted the accustomed ideals of self-surrender, quietism and

languishing nostalgia to be replaced with the new doctrine of the Self. He maintained that

religion without power is only philosophy. Both spiritual and political power was

required for awakening the future of the slumbering Muslim nations.

By the late 1920s, Iqbal got directly involved with politics, and was also deeply

engaged in the preparation of lectures for the Universities of Hyderabad, Madras and

Aligarh which he delivered between the years 1928–29. 8 These lectures, which were first

published as Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930),

constitute the philosophical essence of his work. The lectures give Iqbal’s original views

on the elucidation of basic Islamic ideas, provide a fresh interpretation of the Quran in the

light of modern science, and attest the unshakable faith of Iqbal in the revelations on

which Islam is based.

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 Iqbal wanted to go beyond territorial nationalism by arguing that all Muslims

were one nation: Islamic brotherhood transcended time and space. He felt that there was

a positive relationship between spiritual and temporal power, and the restoration of Islam

to its pristine purity would also reinstate power to its practitioners. In this context, Iqbal’s

concept of a pure community of Muslims maybe regarded as the seed that planted the

idea of Muslim separatism. Even though Iqbal may have envisaged it in apolitical terms,

the only way to realize it was to merge the political with the religious. But there is a

slight contradiction in Iqbal’s thought regarding the identity of Indian Muslims; as part of

the millat-e islamiyyah, (the Islamic peoples), he imagined them as locally grounded and

universally connected at the same time. 9

In this brief summary of the main currents of Iqbal’s thought, one of my chief concerns is

to provide some clarity in the transition between the early and later Iqbal, primarily, the

ideas expressed in his doctoral dissertation and the Reconstruction lectures. I also want to

clarify if there is a clear, discernable line of theological-philosophic thought in his work.

Therefore, I ask two fairly obvious questions: Is Iqbal, the activist Islamic thinker, the

same as the poet-philosopher? Is Iqbal really opposed to Sufism? It appears to me that

although there are inconsistencies in Iqbal’s political thought, his philosophical stand was

basically the same: it was firmly rooted in the prophetic tradition of Islam and in the

mystical thought of India. Iqbal’s lecture, “The Spirit of Muslim Culture,” is particularly

illuminating in this regard. 10 Here Iqbal discusses the fine line between Prophetic and

mystic consciousness and how it relates to his idea of Sufism and Muslim culture. He

wrote, “The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of ‘unitary experience’; even

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when he does return, and he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large.

The Prophet's return is creative. He returns, to insert himself into the sweep of time with

a view to control the forces of history, and thereby to create a fresh world of ideals.” 11

Iqbal also talks of the spirit of the revelation; it belongs to the modern world. “The birth

of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect.” 12 Inner experience is only one source of

knowledge. According to the Quran, there are two other sources of knowledge - Nature

and History, and it is in tapping these sources of knowledge, that the spirit of Islam is

seen at its best. 13 Throughout the lectures, Iqbal emphasizes that the Quran's focus is on

deeds; it appeals to the concrete, not the abstract. He clarifies that “Ibn Arabi has made

the acute observation that God is a percept; the world is a concept. It may be that what we

call the external world is only an intellectual construction and there are other levels of

human experience that can connect us with the Ultimate Reality. ...There are different

approaches to metaphysics.” 14

To sum up, Iqbal did not reject Sufism, he advocated faith in the personal,

dynamic, living God of the Prophetic revelation whom he also addresses in his poetry,

and who, he believes can lift the Muslim society out of the depths of despair. Iqbal’s

concept of Selfhood and Perfect Man is not that of man qua man, but man in relation to

God. What he aims at is not man as a measure of all things but as a being, whose

connection to God gets closer as he grows more perfect. 15 The Perfect Man is not “one

with God” but one who exults in the freedom to accomplish his Selfhood in service to

God. Iqbal believed in an activist Islam: ‘amal or action was his message. Iqbal also

believed in ijtihad, which means striving. He strove toward finding answers to questions

where the Tradition is silent.

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 Askari’s approach to faith and tradition is through the abstract metaphysics of Ibn

Arabi’s wahdat al wujud (Oneness of Being). Iqbal’s concrete position does not appeal to

him. Iqbal sees Faith, din, in a different light. He does not conflate it with Tradition. He

also makes a distinction between a rational understanding of the discipline that faith

imposes, and the thought or discovery of the ultimate source of its authority. The latter

aspect of faith can be the foundation of a kind of metaphysics – a logically consistent

view of the world with God as a part of the view. In the metaphysical view, religion

becomes a matter of personal assimilation of life and the discovery of the ultimate source

of the power or law within the depths of the individual’s own consciousness. In Iqbal’s

view, the Self inhabits the concrete world of human beings. The discipline of faith helps

its uplifting. Iqbal’s vision of Islam in its pristine form is not a medieval religion. He

believed that once it was shorn of the accretions of the ages, Islam would be sparkling

and modern. Iqbal felt that the ummat (Islamic people) and the millat constituted a

spiritual brotherhood that could embrace nations but not merge with them. Besides the

two speeches (1930 and 1932) and some stray letters, Iqbal did not offer much on the

future of a Muslim nation-state.

In the intense and widespread debate on the two nation theory, Muslim scholars were

divided in their opinion of whether the millat, that is, the regional, local Islamic

community could be absorbed in one qaum (nation), and yet retain its mazhab

(religion/faith) which constitutes a great part of the idea of the community. Maulana

Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957) of the Deoband School believed it was possible. He

founded the Jami‘at-e ‘ulama-e hind (Congregation of the Indian ‘Ulama) in 1919, not as

7
a political party, but as a forum to feel the pulse of the Indian Muslims and to speak for

them. In Madani’s vision, people belonging to multiple religious groups could live

harmoniously within the territory of India without sacrificing their religion. To support

his view, he wrote an essay, Hamara Hindustan aur uske faza’il (Our India and its

Virtues), in which he made the argument that India is an Islamic land, in fact next to

Mecca, it is the second holiest place in Islam. He also reminded the community that

Muslims buried their dead and therefore remained attached to the land till Judgment

Day. 16

In a strain quite different from Madani, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi (1903–79)

founded the Jama‘at -e Islami (The Party of Islam) in 1941, which held out the vision of

Islamist rule and spoke of an Islamic system in which all aspects of life would be Islamic.
17
Iqbal’s influence was most profound and manifest in the writings of Maududi. 18

Although Iqbal and Maududi apparently saw eye to eye on many matters, Iqbal died too

early to appreciate the impact of Maududi’s thought on contemporary Islam, particularly

in Pakistan. It is doubtful if Iqbal, had he lived on into the 1950s, would have given

Maududi the support that he apparently gave him in the 1930s. It is significant, however,

to note that Askari became one of the strongest opponents of Maududi’s Jama‘at-e Islami,

especially in Pakistan.

2.

Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919–78), arguably Urdu’s finest literary critic, regarded the

business of criticism as an important activity in itself, an activity that required special

qualifications in both academic and intellectual terms. As a literary critic, he was

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passionately interested in political and cultural issues, especially in literature, which he

considered to be an expression or function of culture. He wrote dazzling essays on

various aspects of literature, notably on the need to free vernacular literatures from the

burden of western paradigms and criticism. The Partition of India split Askari’s life in

two. Askari, therefore, speaks from the center of a crisis of culture – both as a leader of

Urdu intellectual discourse, and as a subject of the rupture inflicted on Indo-Muslim

literary-cultural history.

Askari’s remarkably original ideas on the role of tradition and culture in framing a

literary community's creative and critical consciousness prefigure many issues treated in

recent postcolonial discourse. Askari was also the first to raise the question of identity or

identities in the context of modern postcolonial life and politics. He was the first to

appreciate that the postcolonial self seemed to be contending with multiple identities,

especially after the great traumatic event of Partition. Iqbal, and the satirical poet, Akbar

Ilahabadi (1846–1921), are the only two writers before Askari who projected a

postcolonial outlook on issues of politics, power and culture. As we shall see in the

course of this essay, Askari doesn’t seem to have given Iqbal much space in his work.

Askari wrote a pithy monthly column, Jhalkiyan (Glimpses) for the leading Urdu journal

Saqi (Cup-Bearer) in which he articulated his thoughts on a range of subjects: literary,

historical, socio-cultural, and political. 19 Jhalkiyan (1944–57) encapsulates the period in

Askari’s career that marks him out as the singular literary voice grappling with some of

the most momentous but fragile issues that confronted a new nation and its image in the

world at large. Unlike a historical narrative that is bound by a formal epistemological

9
apparatus, Jhalkiyan’s informal insouciance lends it an alterity that deserves closer

examination. Askari’s agile intelligence, prophetic eloquence and the pervasive power of

his writing all come together in the pronouncements he makes in the column. By 1944,

the horizon of political imagination that is the nationalist discourse in pre-Partition India

had begun to shift in subtle ways. An important choice that middle-class Muslims faced

in politics was to be or not to be a supporter of the Muslim League. These developments

were in harmony with the league’s success in mass mobilization and giving its image a

more ideological character. The league envisioned a confederation, a configuration that

allowed for Indo-Muslim nationalism a range of political and ideological possibilities.

These and similar ideas were articulated in Urdu literary discourse such as Hasrat

Mohani’s literary journal Urdu-e Mu‘alla. 20 In the years 1942–45, the Progressive

Writers’ Association had a falling out with the Congress leadership over the war effort;

they moved closer to the league with the realization that the struggle for self-

determination was not incongruous with the Communist position. They saw no

contradiction in being on the left and supporting the Muslim League. 21

While the focus of the nationalist movement was on more fundamental and

immediate issues such as the Partition itself, Askari’s concerns were about the cultural

definition of Pakistan and also the cultural life of Muslims who would stay back in India.

Askari was the only prominent intellectual who was thinking about culture, albeit only

Urdu (Indo-Muslim) culture. He was excited by the possibilities of leadership of Urdu

intellectuals in shaping Pakistani culture, and emphasized the unique role of Urdu in

shaping the composite Indo-Muslim culture:

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 Urdu is our greatest contribution to India. It is thousand times more valuable than

the Taj Mahal. We are proud of its Indian-ness and are not willing to change it for

Arabian-ness or Persian-ness. 22

The 1940s was a period during which issues of language and culture were heatedly

contested; boundaries were being drawn between the Hindu and the Muslim. In thinking

through the subtleties of difference between Islamic and Muslim, Askari emphasized the

cultural component of identity:

There is a distinction between Islamic culture and Muslim culture. Muslim

culture includes Islam and also all the local cultural values imbibed by it over the

centuries. In the case of India it is Indo-Muslim culture. The language of this

culture is Urdu. 23

Askari’s image of the cultural future of Pakistan is condensed in the above quotes.

3.

Urdu was the outcome of the Indo-Muslim or the composite, (ganga-jamni)

culture. Composite culture has been generally perceived as the product of Turko-Mughal

heritage in language, art or even religious practice. It thrived untrammeled in North

India until it got ensnared in identity politics. It was trivialized by the British who

pushed for the creation of Hindu and Muslim as separate, aggregate social entities. In

this enterprise Urdu, one of the chief products of composite culture, was split into Hindi

and Urdu, with Urdu being assigned to Muslims and Hindi to Hindus. As part of a

colonial agenda, the metonym Urdu (a shortening of the epithet zaban-e urdu-e mu‘alla,

language of the exalted court), not generally used to allude to the language per se,

11
gained currency in the middle of the nineteenth century as did projections of its origins

as a lashkari zaban, language of the army. 24

In the years leading to the seismic upheaval of Partition, Askari had voiced his

concerns about the fate of Indo-Muslim culture. This was the period when the

Progressive Writers’ Movement (formally established and inaugurated in 1936) was at

its peak and a long list of Muslim Urdu writers such as Sajjad Zaheer, Manto, Ismat

Chughtai, Kaifi Azmi, Sardar Jafri, FaizAhmad Faiz, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Sahir,

Makhdoom Muhiuddin and others were widely read and respected by both Muslims and

non-Muslims. These writers represented the Muslim Socialist liberal position. Because

the forces of separatism were calling for the languages to be identified with religious

identity, the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA) had taken the lead in

organizing conferences to help mend the rift between Hindi and Urdu. The AIPWA

pushed unrealistic, placatory tactics, such as advocating the use of roman script for

bringing Urdu-Hindi together again as one language: “Hindustani.” 25

Askari, who had no sympathies for the Marxist ideology of literature, and was a

sharp critic of Progressivism for the most part of his career, felt that the Progressives

with the support of the Communist Party could have taken a stand on Urdu and

emphasized its importance to Indo-Muslim culture. They could have helped create an

awareness of the vulnerability of the Indo-Muslim culture. The PWA’s flip-flopping

between supporting the Indian Muslim League and Indian National Congress Party did

not serve the cause of Indo-Muslim nationalism. 26 Askari himself was quite wary of the

Communist Party of India, which he felt was exerting a strong influence on Indian

12
Muslim intellectuals but did not have their interests in mind. In April 1947, when

communal rioting had made the Hindu-Muslim situation volatile, he wrote:

The Communist party is anxious to get Muslims under its influence. This is

the Party that has an anathema to the Islamic religion, its culture, traditions;

everything that Indian Muslims hold dear and want to maintain as a glue to hold

themselves together. I have nothing against communism as such...but the real

danger is from the Communist Party of India that is entirely in the hands of others,

and the Muslims have no hand in the determination of its policies, nor the Party

has any concern for the interest of Muslims. 27

In the bitterness of Partition, the composite culture was slowly pushed into the hoary

land of myth.

Nehru’s secular stance in his speeches and writings, such as The Discovery of

India, had tried to set the tone for a common heritage and shared culture for India, only a

small cohort of scholars-intellectuals such as Tara Chand, Abid Husain, Humayun Kabir,

and Muhammad Mujeeb tried to develop a literature to support the idea of composite

culture. 28 The issue in defining composite culture was what percentage of it was

Muslim and how much of it was Hindu? In India, after independence, the phrase ganga-

jamni, which originally described ornaments made of mixed metals with a double hue,

began to be used to refer to the mixture of cultural forms associated with Muslims and

Hindus particularly of north India and more or less as an allusion to a Mughal heritage. 29

But, as David Lelyveld has astutely observed, it was more a term of affectionate

condescension, a matter of mere decoration, like an artifact from the past. 30

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 As mentioned earlier, Askari had blamed the Progressives for adopting an

ambivalent position regarding the future of Urdu vis-à-vis the “nation” and even

distancing themselves from it in the years leading to the Partition. Apparently, he

continued to blame them for their imperviousness to Muslim sensibilities even after the

Partition. His essay, Musalman Adeeb aur Musalman Qaum (Muslim Writers and the

Muslim Nation), written a year after the Partition when Saqi resumed publication from

Karachi, re-opens the issue of the position of (Progressive) Muslim writers towards

Muslim culture and identity. Speaking of an unnamed Marxist Urdu literary critic in

India, every word dripping with sarcasm, he wrote:

A famous Progressive literary critic who is a Professor at a prominent university

in Uttar Pradesh had asked me: is there such a thing as Muslim culture; and if

there is, what is the point in keeping it alive? The second thing he said was that

Urdu has never been the language of the people. It is stuck with the wealthy

class. 31

In the same essay, Askari roundly criticized Progressive writers for their “attitude”

towards the newly founded state of Pakistan. Again, Askari does not name anyone, but

his specific target was the celebrated Progressive Marxist poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Askari

singled Faiz’s famous poem, Subh-e Azadi (Morning of Freedom) as a piece of defeatist,

self indulgent melancholy that betrays the community in its moment of destiny. 32 In

Subh-e Azadi, Faiz alludes to the darkness of the promised dawn and asks fellow

comrades to “move on, for the destination has not yet arrived.” Askari responded:

14
 Our poets have the complaint, we saw all kinds of dreams but their realization has

been exactly the opposite. Our destination has not come yet, we have a long way

to go […] If our venerable poets have not found their destination yet, then may

God give them the courage to continue their journey. […] As for the Muslim

nation, it has found its destination. In fact it found its destination on the very day

that the desire to maintain its existence and individuality was born in its heart. 33

Askari felt that the Indo-Muslim community's identity, its culture could be saved in

Pakistan. He had no sympathy or patience for mourning the sufferings of Partition or

apportioning the blame, in the way many of the Progressive writers did. He accepted the

suffering as a sacrifice that was made to produce the historical destiny; a redemptive

moment in opening the community to a new life of freedom. For Askari, the appropriate

expression for this fusion of suffering and hope was the classical ghazal. 34 The classical

ghazal form had the compact layers of depth and complexity of metaphor to chronicle the

ecstasy and despair of the birth of the new nation, mourn the sadness of farewell to the

old homeland.

It has been difficult to capture the nuance and angst of the kind of bi-nationalism

that Indian Muslims experienced in the throes of India’s nationalist movement. There was

such an emotional entity as Indo-Muslim nationalism – it was the cultural pluralism of a

people who sacrificed and struggled to get Pakistan for the sake of their cultural identity.

These were mostly the Urdu speaking North Indian Muslims who were both “Indian” and

“Muslim” at the same time. They wanted an assured space for their cultural well-being.

Ironically, once Pakistan, truncated or fractured, was created, Urdu and its culture had to

15
struggle to create a space for itself; there was no region in Pakistan where the Muslims

from U.P. could feel at home. The refugees, panahgirs, emerged as a new identity –

mohajirs.

Askari believed that if the status of literature is ambivalent in a society, its writers

cannot be expected to experiment, to think new, to distinguish the essence of the culture

from what is just incidental. But this was not something that could be easily

accomplished. In grappling with issues of cultural identity that urgently confronted the

erstwhile Indian Muslims who were now the citizens of the newly created nation-state of

Pakistan, Askari felt a pressing need to craft, or put together, a Pakistani identity that

would be cultural first and Islamic second. But to what extent would the cultural part be

Indo-Muslim? What claims on the historical past should be considered more important

than others in the structuring of the new identity?

The biggest challenge for Askari was to establish a firm relationship between

Urdu and Muslim culture. But the ticklish issue was how to define Muslim culture. The

nuanced distinction between Islamic literature and Muslim literature also had to be drawn.

It was not an easy task to explain the distinction between Islamic culture and Muslim

culture to the diverse regional populace of Pakistan. Askari wrote that “Muslim culture

was the culture of the people who asked for and got Pakistan,” which essentially meant

that Muslim culture was the culture of the Urdu speaking people. 35 However, the reality

was quite different. Of the thirty-three million people who formed Pakistan, one-third

was Bengali. The Urdu speaking mohajirs were in fact just a minority of the refugees

who had left India at the time of Partition. Three-quarters of all the mohajirs were

Punjabis. They were able to settle down quickly and abandon the mohajir label. The

16
mohajirs from Uttar Pradesh did not have the advantage of a cultural region in Pakistan

that could be similar to their north Indian home. 36 Askari observed that soon after the

establishment of the new state the disparity between “us” and “them” began to surface.

He wrote that although it was the collective will that fulfilled this dream, there was

already disquiet about who actually belonged. The conundrum for the mohajirs was how

to separate yet not be separate from the past. In urging fellow writers to set new standards

of literary production Askari encouraged them to draw upon the shared past – to look

upon tradition as the repository of an array of meanings and feelings that alone could give

perspective to a new feeling or emotion. He maintained that there was no such historical

entity as “pure Islam.” Islam was also a part of human civilization and its philosophies.

Urdu was not the first language of a large section of Muslims in the regions that

became Pakistan. Bengali and Punjabi were the main languages in those areas followed

by Sindhi and other regional languages. 37 For Urdu to have a wider base among the

various stripes of Muslims in Pakistan it had to have a makeover; it had to pass through

the difficult process of separating from its Indic tradition and move closer to being

identified as the language of Islam. Muhammad Hasan Askari who had upheld Urdu’s

secular tradition, indigenized western literary paradigms and critical practices to build

Urdu as a world language, began to connect Urdu to what he called “its roots in Islamic

tradition.” 38 In pushing for a shift to Islamic religious tradition as the source for Urdu

literature, Askari gave precedence to the mystic-Islamic concept of wahdat al wujud

(Unity in Being). 39 He tried to forge an encompassing poetics that would incorporate the

entire East as a unity. In this way his ideal of Pakistani literature was quite different from

Abul Ala Maududi’s concept of Islamic literature.

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4.

Indo-Muslim, Pakistani-Muslim or Pakistani-Islamic, Islamic-Muslim

We will now examine Iqbal’s Urdu poetry to see where it can be accommodated in

Askari’s model: is it Islamic, Muslim, or Indo-Muslim literature? Although he began his

poetic career in Urdu, for the sake of a wider pan-Islamic appeal, Iqbal began to compose

in Persian a well. He invoked Islamic history and civilization in his Urdu poems. He

wrote with a lot of passion in an oratory style that had a wide appeal. Two poems in

particular, Shikwa (Complaint) and Jawab-e Shikwa (Response to Complaint) have been

called “Muslim” poems because they had a special appeal for Muslim audiences and

perhaps not the same appeal for non-Muslim (Hindu) audiences. 40

Judging from the numerous editions that Khushwant Singh’s translation of the

Shikwa poems has gone through, it should be obvious that the poems’ circle of admirers

is very large. 41 Let us for the moment accept that Shikwa is a “Muslim” poem. Should

this be regarded as praise or a criticism of the poem? If a poem is about or appeals to a

particular community, does that make it any less great of a poem? If Iqbal did not write

for the Muslims, would he have been a better poet?

After reading Shikwa multiple times, I asked myself if the poem really had an

appeal exclusively for the ummat, the universal community of Muslims, or it was

specifically tied to the reality of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. Urdu literary critic,

Salim Ahmad had asked the question whether Iqbal comes across as a universal poet, and

his reply indicates that he did regard Iqbal as a universal poet, because, according to him,

universality too, requires a certain kind of bounding. He maintained that Shikwa, by

18
limiting itself as the voice of the Muslims alone, is a ‘bounding’ of sorts, and, in

complaining about the decline of the Muslims, Iqbal’s view is pan-Islamic, not local. I

think that although Iqbal’s view is pan-Islamic, the poem shows how much the angst of

the local Muslims moved him to draw inspiration from the past glory of Islam. It is

essentially an Indo-Muslim poem and can be enjoyed better in that context.

Even though Iqbal’s poem Shikwa was born out of the anguish, still, Askari felt

that the poem is not able to reach the heights of exquisite anguish. For example, if Shikwa

is compared with the poems (nauha) which describe the spiritual anguish of the Jewish

community, it fails to match the intensity and depth of those poems. Perhaps it was

because Iqbal lacked the experience of the acute despair of loss, and homelessness that

was needed to express that kind of deep anguish. Shikwa, according to Askari, is a

passionate, oratorical poem which lacks the depth of emotional experience. It has

boldness of diction and tone and solicits appreciation for its felicity. In its power and

eloquence one can almost feel the poet’s pride in creating such a poem – the demands of

appreciation rather than thought.

There have been many poems in this mode in the past especially from the

classical Persian poets, such as Sa‛di, Khaqani and Anwari. In Urdu, there is Altaf Husain

Hali’s 1879 poem Madd-o jazr-e Islam (Ebb and Flow of Islam) which is simply known

as the Musaddas ( six-line stanza, hence, a poem in that form) because it so effectively

deployed the four-plus two-line metrical stanza (aa, aa, bb) for its structure. The sixth line

of the musaddas structure incorporates a classic, bold, reverberating statement that

reinforces every line that has gone before it. Both Sa‛di and Hali address their poems to

the Prophet of Islam. Their poems are in fact supplications for help. Iqbal’s poem is not

19
addressed to the Prophet. It is addressed to God directly, and asks not for mercy but for

equitable reward to the Muslims for following the right path, and eloquently complains

against “God’s having forsaken” the Muslims to a state of material and political penury.

Hali’s Musaddas pales in comparison to Shikwa because it does not have the lofty rhythm

that was Iqbal’s special gift in poetry.

There was also another kind of model before Iqbal: the highly formal marsiyas

(elegies) written in the same six-line stanza form to grieve, weep for and celebrate the

Passion and steadfastness of Husain, the Prophet’s grandson, martyred at Karbala (in

present day Iraq) in the year AD 680. The greatest exponent of this genre was Mir Anis

(1802–74) of Lucknow, whose poems are recited with eloquence and fervor even to this

day. Iqbal clearly modeled his Shikwa poems on those of Mir Anis. In adopting Mir

Anis’s passionate rhetoric, Iqbal comes across as an Indo-Muslim poet.

Sufism was evidently not a suitable source for poems of such passion. Iqbal must

have also known the poems of Al Hallaj, 42 but they were of an order of passion entirely

different from those of Mir Anis. Viewed from the Sufi standpoint, his poem would be a

deliberate complaint and a Sufi never complains. The poem, Jawab-e Shikwa, is a return

to a more traditional path. In Shikwa the central idea was that God is not fulfilling His

promise of protecting the followers of the Prophet from loss and decline in fortune. In

Jawab-e Shikwa God answers directly that He has not broken His promise, it is the

Muslims who have turned away from the Path. In this way, Iqbal has tried to balance his

position within the reformist tradition.

From the above discussion of Iqbal and Askari, their engagement with the

sensibility of the relationship between Islamic, Indo-Muslim, Urdu and culture, it is

20
possible to draw /understand the meanings of South Asian Muslim identity during the

momentous decades of the 1930s and 40s when it was sharply in focus, and follow it

through the present. Askari’s Islam is of the elitist, intellectual kind. He believed in

preservation and continuity of tradition and redefined Indo-Muslim as Pakistani identity.

His effort to separate from the Indic past was not altogether clear cut. For Urdu, he

advocated a bypass of the colonial interregnum with an effort to re-link to the classical

mystic-lyric model in literature. At first, he acknowledged that it would be useful to adapt

critical tools from the West for the development of Urdu as a modern language, with the

understanding that every culture has the right to craft its specificities. However, the

restoration of the classical tradition as a practice meant undoing or brushing off a great

deal of the influences that had permeated through western education. He did not explain

how this model would be functional in a de-colonized, post WWII, modern state, for

which time and space had made connecting with Tradition a formidable challenge. Later

on, he added “Islamic” to Pakistani as the model for Urdu's literary tradition; however,

the political exigencies of the Pakistani state literally “killed” Urdu literature for him.

Iqbal’s image of Muslim identity was practical. He was an activist and did not

hesitate in using poetry for didactic purposes. He did not suffer from the anxiety of

separatism. He was first and foremost a Kashmiri-Punjabi Muslim and comes across as

one. Had Iqbal lived longer, he may have found himself agreeing with Askari, that by the

late 1950s the ideal of Indo-Muslim identity had lost its way, elided by the counter-

poised, bounded cultural and linguistic factions intrinsic to the developing political

culture of Pakistan.

21
 We now live in a “post-Partition world” with the advantages of hindsight from

which Iqbal and Askari could not draw. They lived at a moment in time conflicted by

opposing, trilateral political agendas, in which they attempted to formulate a solution, a

way to avoid the abyss, which for them was the erasure of Indo-Muslim culture. For Iqbal

and Askari, the idea that one could preserve, protect and advance the Indo-Muslim

culture by transplanting it and the language on which it was based into soil essentially

homogeneous to its origins was compelling, given the available alternatives. But, and it is

important to emphasize it, the Indus River valley, and its adjacent cultures, is not the

Ganga-Jumna river region, from any perspective: cultural, linguistic, ethnic or political.

One must conclude, in hindsight, that Iqbal and Askari were intellectually naïve in their

respective, albeit different beliefs regarding the possibility of resuscitating and promoting

the Indo-Muslim identity in a way to transcend the social and political realities of a “new

homeland,” far from the soil and salt that nurtured it.

Before his death in 1938, Iqbal could not have forecast the appropriation of his

belief by promoters of a two-state solution, a belief he held in the virtual possibility of a

place (“Pakistan”) where Islam could renew (purify) itself. Iqbal could not foresee that

his faith in the mystic tradition of India would be suppressed by the need of the Pakistani

state to deny its Indian heritage, to treat India as the enemy, the Other which must be

defeated at all costs. The idea of a composite culture is more than a theoretical construct

– it is a cultural reality traceable in the history of South Asian social practices, language

and literature. Whatever exists in Pakistani culture as a legacy of India’s mystical past is

today tragically under siege by Islamist cadres whose beliefs Iqbal and Askari would find

abhorrent.

22
 Iqbal’s genius complicates any attempt to read him solely as a South Asian or

Universal poet, as a Muslim or simply a human being focusing on deep, intellectual

questions of culture, religion and identity. Yet, we do have to try to understand him in the

context of his South Asian origins. There is sufficient evidence in his writings to locate

where his sympathies lie and the identity of his audience. Ultimately, they are variegated,

as diverse as his genius.

Askari, the hard-core literary critic, had his feet on the ground, at least until it

began to move under him. He was destined to be disappointed. His decision to immigrate

to Pakistan was probably the correct one, as he was not one like Tara Chand to defend the

politics of composite culture and stick it out in the defense of Islam in India. Like Iqbal,

Askari’s conception of the South Asian Muslim, Urdu language and literature, with the

added factor of the power of Tradition, was highly intellectualized, incapable of

answering to the twists and turns of political realities. As I have written elsewhere,

Askari’s experience was a “life cut in two.” Before Partition, he had developed into a

precocious critic of language, literature and culture, analyzing his colonized self already

within a post-colonial perspective. His experience in Pakistan reflected the disaster of

Partition itself, resulting in his decision to declare Urdu literature “dead” by the early

1950s. He retreated to the confines of a small college, refusing government positions, or

to recognize the claim of the state to define Pakistani culture.

Modern Urdu’s Indo-Muslim (ganga-jamni) and Pakistani-Muslim culture(s) are

mirror images of one another; but as images, a parallax exists, an intangible otherness

separates them, a displacement arising from a tension between inadequately understood

local and universal Islamic identities – the inevitable result of attempting to preserve

23
Indo-Muslim identity by (a) presuming it could not exist in a de-colonized, independent

India, (b) capturing them in their local form(s) and mapping them onto a “United Nations

acceptable” state, the original composition of which hardly reflected the conditions which

produced its impetus.

A quote from the Shikwa embodies the enigma of identity sought by Iqbal as well

as Askari, and the problematic nature of the literary conceit, as it occurred to Iqbal:

‘ajami khum hai to kya, mai to hejazi hai meri

naghma hindi hai to kya, lai to hejazi hai meri

(So what if the wine glass is Persian, my wine is Arabian

so what if my song is Indian, my tune is Arabian).

1
This essay was inspired by a chapter in my forthcoming book on Muhammad Hasan

Askari, to be published by Oxford University Press (New Delhi) and Palgrave-MacMillan

in the series “Literature and Cultures of the Islamic World.”

2
Vajh-e begangi nahin ma‘lum / tum jahan ke ho van ke ham bhi hain.
3
His dissertation was published in England in 1908. Twenty years later he discouraged

its translation into Urdu, because he said he had moved on from the ideas expressed in it.

Annamarie Schimmel, Gabriel’s Wing, A Study into the Religious Ideas of Muhammad

Iqbal (Leiden: Brill, 1963), 38.

4
Apparently he thought that Sufism was dangerously close to pantheism and quietism

and Vedantic thought was too cold, its metaphysical system too “extreme” and “sublime"

for his purpose. See Farzana Shaikh’s article, “Millat and Mazhab: Rethinking Iqbal’s

Political Vision,” in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy (eds.) Living Together Separately,

24
Cultural India in History and Politics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Shaikh makes a convincing argument about Iqbal’s ahistorical, political vision.

5
Shaikh, 375.
6
See Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, edited and annotated by M.

Saeed Sheikh (Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1986), 72–78.

7
Sufism speaks of khudi, essentially as bekhudi, or absorption in the non-self; in fact, it

advocates the destruction of the Self as an essential step in the liberation from earthly

desires.
8
He was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council in 1927 and was also Secretary to the

All India Muslim League. He delivered the historic address to the twenty-fifth meeting of

the All India Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930 in which he suggested the alternative

of having a Muslim state within India.

9
These ideas are discussed admirably by Farzana Shaikh in her most recent book,

Making Sense of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

10
Iqbal, Reconstruction, 99–115.
11
Ibid., 99.
12
Ibid., 101.
13
Ibid., 102.
14
Ibid., 144.
15
Iqbal’s poem Zauq-o Shauq (Delight and Desire) explicates the fine distinction

between union with God and closeness to God. Quoted here are the concluding lines of

the poem. The translation is by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi:

“Unionlessness is greater than Union. Union causes

25
Desire’s death; separation has the delicious pleasure

Of demanding, seeking. Even in union

I lacked the daring to see, although

My impudent eye sought, and yet sought

Excuses to look. I knew that unionlessness

Powers desire and longing. The waves seek

Unionlessness, the honour of the drop is saved

By being unionless.”
16
See Barbara Metcalf’s article, “Reinventing Islamic Politics in Interwar India: The

Clergy Commitment to ‘Composite Nationalism’,” in Hasan and Roy, Living Together,

389–403.
17
Maududi wrote many essays on the subject of Muslim nationhood. His essays are

collected in two volumes: Tahreek-e Azadi aur Musalman (Muslims and the Freedom

Movement) first published in 1937 (Lahore: Pan-Islamic Publishers, 1976, reprint). His

most important book on the subject of an Islamic state is, Islami Riasat (Islamic State),

(Lahore: Islamic Publications, 2000).

18
For an elaboration on Maududi’s ideas of Muslim nationhood see Masood Ashraf Raja,

Constructing Pakistan, Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity,

1857–1947 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 132–135.

19
Saqi was published from Delhi by the noted writer-journalist Shahid Ahmad Dihlavi.

Jhalkiyan was incorporated in January, 1944.

20
See Nauman Naqvi’s unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Mourning Indo-Muslim

Modernity: Moments in Post-Colonial Urdu Literary Culture, Columbia University 2008.

26
In chapter 3, Naqvi provides a perceptive, nuanced discussion of what it meant to be a

“binationalist,” that is, support Indo-Muslim nationalism.

21
See Khizar Humayun Ansari, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North

Indian Muslims (1917–47) (Lahore: Book Traders, 1990), 188. The PWA and the

demand for Pakistan; it is worth noting that these socialist moments are missing in the

historiography of Indo-Muslim and Pakistan nationalism.

22
See his essay “Taqsim-e Hind ke Ba‘d,” (After Partition), written for Jhalkiyan,

reproduced in a volume containing some of his collected works, Muhammad Hasan

Askari, Majmu‘a (Karachi: Sang-e Meel Publications, 2000), 1135, henceforth Majmu‘a.
23
Ibid.
24
Urdu also means “army camp” in Turkish. For a full discussion of the history and

politics of naming the Urdu language, see, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Early Urdu History

and Literary Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

25
See Sajjad Zaheer’s colorful biographical history “Ap Biti” on the Progressive

Movement, in Rushna’i (Delhi: Seema Publications, 1985, reprint). Zaheer provides

interesting asides to the formal debates of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani. The AIPWA dropped

the issue altogether after 1939. Instead of accepting the shortcomings of the AIPWA,

Zaheer lays the blame on Maulvi Abdul Haq, for having a narrow vision regarding the

future of Hindustani.
26
For a cogent discussion of the changing positions of the PWA, see, Khizar Humayun

Ansari, The Emergence of Socialist Thought Among North Indian Muslims, 1917–1947

(Lahore: Book Traders, 1990).

27
27
Majmu‘a, 1103. This essay was written in support of a new organization formed by

Muslim intellectuals, Al-amin, to help keep “Muslims in their homes” after the bloody

riots of Garh Mukteshwar.

28
Nehru wrote the book during 1942–46 when he was incarcerated at the Ahmednagar

Jail. It was first published in 1946 and has been in print ever since.
29
I am assuming that ganga-jamni is derived from Ganga-Jumna, the confluence of two

sacred rivers of North India. This is historically the land of composite culture. Platts

defines it as, mixed like oil and butter, made of mixed metal as gold and silver. Ganga-

Jumna is defined as a mixture of any kind. See John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu,

Classical Hindi and English (London: Oxford University Press, 1960, sixth printing).
30
See Lelyveld’s essay, “The Colonial Context of Muslim Separatism: From Sayyid

Ahmad Barelvi to Sayyid Ahmad Khan,” in Hasan and Roy, Living Together, 404–14.
31
Majmu‘a, 1112. The critic he is alluding to is noted Marxist Urdu scholar and literary

critic, Ehtesham Husain.

32
“Subh-e Azadi” is an oft quoted, highly popular poem of Faiz that has become

paradigmatic of the disillusions of Partition. It is definitely not one of Faiz’s best poems,

suffering as it does from a surfeit of cloying imagery that lacks depth. It is available in

English translation. See for instance, Agha Shahid Ali's beautiful rendition in the

anthology, The Rebel's Silhouette, Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Salt Lake City:

University of Utah Press, Peregrine Smith, 1992).

33
Majmu‘a, 1114.
34
Delhi’s devastation had been poured into the most haunting ghazal poetry by the great

18th and 19th century poets. Askari liked to quote from the ghazals of Nasir Kazmi’s

28
(1925–72) as true examples in the classical style, mirroring the poignancy of Partition.

(translation is mine.) For example, the verses below were his favorite:

In the jungle somewhere, evening is upon us:

That’s us, who left home

At the crack of dawn.

Remnants of birds’ nests

Burnt, among the branches,

Provide the clue:

There was a time when spring was here too.

35
The claim that the mohajir community from Uttar Pradesh represented the true

Pakistanis and had made the most sacrifices for the achievement of the state is an

important component of mohajir political identity.

36
Around 60 percent of the mohajirs from Uttar Pradesh settled in Sindh; the greatest

concentration was in the city of Karachi. Emphasis on Urdu and its protection has always

been a strong element in their identity.

37
Iqbal’s vision of a Muslim state within India was the collapsing together of the North-

West Frontier states. It did not include Bengal.

38
He wrote a number of powerful essays on Rivayat (Tradition) and Urdu Adab ki

Rivayat (The Tradition of Urdu Literature), also original essays on Sufism and the

tradition of Khiyal music, meanings of the Urdu alphabet that can be found in Vaqt ki

Ragini (Tune of the Times), Karachi, 1979.

39
As enunciated by the Spanish Islamic mystic philosopher Ibn Arabi.
40
Salim Ahmed, Iqbal Ek Sha‘ir.

29
41
Khushwant Singh, (translation and annotation) Shikwa and Jawab-e Shikwa: Iqba’'s

Dialog with Allah (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).

42
Mansur al-Hallaj is the tenth century Persian mystic poet who was martyred for the

utterance, "I am the Truth."

30